A Splendid Shedding of Skins
by Evangeline Henri
Summary: Because deep down, everyone wants Sirius to throw them a surprise party! Remus turns sixteen, and Sirius helps him celebrate it-- complete with fireworks, and fluff. (Remus/Sirius slash.)


"A Splendid Shedding of Skins" 

By: Evangeline Henri

Summary: Because deep down, everyone wants Sirius to throw them a surprise party!  Remus turns sixteen, and Sirius helps him celebrate it.  (Remus/Sirius slash.)

Rating: PG

Dedication—Ja, here's your much belated birthday present.  And Kit, you are the coolest beta/heckler a girl could ask for.  'Stat, you have been permanently entrenched in my dedications spot since Day One; thanks for reading this.  And the last dedication goes to me—whoever I am right now and whoever I've become.  

A/N: This was a gift/challenge fic given to me while away in the wilds of Maine (okay, Bates College, but it's hyperbole, everyone!  Give an English geek a break.)  Pure fluff.

***

            Remus Lupin sighed, scanning the ravaged common room.  His lips curved into a slight smile and he shook his head, bits of confetti falling from his very-in-need-of-a-trim hair.  He fingered a scrap, bright red interwoven with gold— Gryffindor colours.  Down to the decorations, he had gotten it right.

            "Happy birthday, Moony."  Remus whirled around.  There was Sirius Black, standing in the doorway that led to their dormitory.  His head rested against the doorframe, and a noisemaking trumpet dangled in the fingers of his left hand with an easy grace.  At home wherever he went, parties nevertheless agreed with Sirius more than any other situation.

            "Thank you, Sirius," he replied, knowing that his own smile had widened.  "Thank you for all of this."

            Sirius waved the noisemaker at him.  "It was nothing.  What are friends for, if not to throw ridiculously oversized sweet sixteen birthday bashes the night before History of Magic exams?"  Sirius frowned a bit, but his eyes never lost their mirth.  "Which reminds me— be sure to write nice and large tomorrow, and to tilt your page towards me, will you?"

            Remus chose to ignore that last bit.  Instead, he looked at the air between them, in which a message hung, pregnant in the empty space.  'Happy Sixteenth Birthday, Remus Lupin.  Enjoy It!' A neat little Banner Charm, something in him noted.  "Who helped you with that?"  He pointed to the message, which was now shooting off multicolour sparks.

            "Thank you for your confidence in my charm skills, Moony."  He grinned.  "But you're right; Lily did it.  She's much better at Charms than I am.  Normally, I'd have you to give me a hand on something like that, but I couldn't really have done that this time, could I?"

            Remus shook his head, and more glitter rained down like drops of water after a summer's shower.  "I can't believe you managed to keep all this a secret from me."  Stepping over the festive flotsam and jetsam that had accumulated during the course of the night, he walked over to the table where the gifts had been piled.  "The planning, the supplies, the guests and the gifts— however did you do it?"

            "You'd be surprised what you can keep secret if you set your mind to it.  Once I decided to throw you a party, the secrecy naturally followed."  Another Sirius Black smile.  "You know, for someone who supposedly has lupine senses and all that, you can be completely oblivious sometimes."

            Remus tried to match the infamous grin; failing to measure up to its brilliance, he looked down at the gaily-wrapped presents.  His hand was shaking, he saw, the timorous quivering of a nervous creature.  The hairs at the back of his neck prickled, but then they had always done that whenever Sirius was near.  The familiar drumbeat of blood pounding in his brain started up again, making him feel as if the room was pulsating.  He hoped that Sirius would accept his smile, hoped that he would not read Remus as easily as he was often able to.  Yes, you would be surprised what you can keep secret if you set your mind to it, Padfoot.

            "James and Lily's speech was good, didn't you think?"  Sirius smiled.  "I helped them with that."

            "Yes, I had wondered how two Prefects should have amassed such a large array of fireworks for the denouement."  Sirius was infamous for his pyromaniacal tilt; he was the undisputed distributor of all things fire-related to the Hogwarts student population.  And yet, somehow, the professors still managed to ignore his practices, a tidy little arrangement that had been plaguing Snape and his gang of Slytherin lowlives for years.  "Well, they didn't blow the earth completely to smithereens, so I guess it was a success, then," Remus said, eyes flickering over the charred edges of the rug.

            "I knew you'd like it.  At Christmas last year, you told us that the starmines of blue peony were your favourites.  Or rather, 'Oh, look, Padfoot, see how wonderful the sort of shaky chaotic blue thingies with the yellowish splotches are!  I love those!'" 

            Remus blushed, surprised and more than a bit glad that Sirius had remembered his exact words.  He looked down, trying to hide his pleasure, and fell about to scanning over his presents.

            "My gift isn't there."  Sirius tone was quieter than it had been, like the spring wind ruffling the hair of a sleeping child.

            "Oh," said Remus, skimming his fingers across a pink ribbon.  "This party was present enough, Padfoot.  It's all I could ask for."

            Sirius took steps into the room, skirting the fallen decorations as Remus himself had done.  He put the trumpet to his mouth, the plastic tip resting comfortably against his lower lip.  Perhaps this party wasn't all I could ask for, Remus amended, as his friend let out a soft note on the instrument.

            Long black locks fell in front of Sirius' eyes, only to be pushed away by an impatient hand, and steered behind an ear like third-class passengers in a crowded sleeper car.  His eyes were still smiling; his face was warm.  "None of that.  I don't want you to think that I don't have anything for you."  He stopped only when he was mere inches from Remus.  "I was just afraid to give it to you while everyone else was around."  His voice was breathy, and the characteristic bravado was absent. 

            He's going to kiss me now, Remus thought in a burst of clarity.  How splendid— though that was not what he meant at all.  Words denied his plea for aid; he did not quite know how to verbalize what he felt.  Glittering motes of brilliance fell like so much confetti before his eyes, too ephemeral for him to catch and describe in these tender moments, with Sirius right here.  Splendid would have to do.  Shades of hope flashed their voluptuous forms, but Remus let such supple description of this feeling pass.  For once, he let the writer drop his quill.  There would be a time for explanations later.  In this moment, there was only Sirius.

            They were almost touching.  If Remus stepped forwards just a bit, he could stretch to bridge this last distance.  He stayed motionless, willing himself to cease all movement.  He would remain perfectly still, as an enchanted princess sleeping under the spell of a malicious witch.  When their lips touched, he would come to life again.  But now, he would not move.

            Sirius raised his hand, now brushing away a lock from where it had shielded Remus' right eye.  The gesture was simple, gentle as a benediction prayer, yet Remus watched it, fascinated.  The play of hair and hand was somehow so beautiful, so important that he dared not blink.

            "Close your eyes," Sirius whispered.  Remus did; now he truly felt like a sleeping heroine.  An anticipatory buzz prickled his skin, as if a ghost had brushed up against him.  Not an echo of the past, though, but a wisp of the future— the spectre of things yet to come. 

            There was no kiss, however.  Remus heard the mutterings of a spell, too quiet for him to identify.  Then, there came rustling of papers, as if a small creature had flown into the common room.  Frowning, he almost opened his eyes.  This was not supposed to happen.  He reined himself in at the last moment, however.  Surely all of Sirius' kindness had earned him at least the benefit of the doubt.

            "Now open them," and Remus did, lips still expecting at any moment to be kissed.  The first things that registered were Sirius' eyes, and the white flame that waved and flickered within them.  Then, Remus lowered his gaze.  In Sirius' outstretched hands was a gleaming silver helmet.

            Remus picked it up; the thing was sleek and smooth in his hands.  The inside was black leather, and on the back was the silhouette of a wolf, head thrown back, howling at the moon.  

            "It's for you, on the motorbike."  Remus knew he meant that fabled chrome monster so infamous among the student body.  All ears pricked up at the sound of the great thing revving into action, heads turning from textbooks and tests to look for it and its rider.  The bike had fixated many; at least half of the giggling girls at Hogwarts trembled at the adolescent fantasy of being allowed to ride upon it, arms wrapped tightly around its rebel driver, hair flowing back to curl with the exhaust.  

            Sirius rode alone, though, a fact that fuelled those pubescent erotic daydreams all the more.  He had once told Remus that sometimes he felt as though all of their destinies were closing in.  Soon, he had said, their futures would be upon them, and the vague shadows of his own filled him with a paralysing dread.  His bike, then, was his escape; when he fled on it, it was the only time he was going too fast for tomorrow to catch up.  No one ever rode with Sirius Black.  Ever.

            So why had Remus been given a helmet, then?  For here was the pivot around which the rest of this spun, Remus was sure.  If only he knew why Sirius had given him this most unusual present, then perhaps he might be able to understand the party, that imminent kiss that had not come.  He tried his best to think logically.  If the helmet was meant for the rider, and Sirius always rode alone, then obviously Sirius would not be on the bike.  But did that mean….  

            "Sirius, I couldn't possibly accept your motorbike!  I just couldn't." 

            Sirius frowned.  "What?"  

            But Remus would not be stopped.  "I mean, you've put so much work into it, replacing the engine with one that met Ministry emission standards, changing the seats to black leather from maroon shag, spelling the entire thing so that it actually flies….  You shouldn't be giving it to me."

            "Remus, I—"

            "No wait; let me explain.  You must be daft; I don't even know what I'd do with the thing.  I'm not certified to drive a motorbike, and I'm not sure that I'll have the time for you to teach me, what with NEWTS coming up and everything."    
  


            Sirius looked genuinely distressed.  "But—"

            "Besides," Remus began, taking a breath.  He flinched, sure that he was about to hurt his friend.  "I'm not even sure that I'd want your motorbike.  No offence, Sirius, really.  I'm not—"

            "Moony," he said, and Remus saw that he was smiling.  "I'm not giving you my motorbike." 

            And Remus was a monumental idiot.  True to form, all he could come up with was a strangled, "Oh."

            Sirius smirked.  "Sorry to give you the wrong impression back there.  I honestly didn't mean to lead you on, though it was funny to listen to you rail off like that."

            "Thanks."

            "Anytime."  He softened.  "It's just, well— I kind of wanted you to be able to ride with me.  Because when I storm off to escape the world, I'm not trying to escape you.  I realized that maybe you'd think that, and I wanted to show you it wasn't true.  I want to be alone sometimes, but even then, I want you to be with me, alone." Was that a blush staining Sirius' cheeks?

            Remus grinned.  "Padfoot?"

            "Yeah?"  Sirius raised an eyebrow at him.

            "That made an amazingly little amount of sense, but still managed to be really touching."

            He laughed, a short burst of sound that livened the quiet air around them and rippled the Banner Charm slightly.  "Thank you.  I think."

            "You're welcome, then."  

            Remus was struck by the hilarity of their situation: two best friends, grinning and blushing at one another as if they had just met.  What this love of his had done to their easy camaraderie, to the casual laughs and conspiratorial grins they had shared in previous ages!  There had been a time when Remus would have laughed at the idea of feeling awkward in Sirius' presence, and wondered who, exactly, was controlling his thoughts to make him so.  But now, Remus had never felt more like himself than at this very moment, sharing a silence that could only be broken in one way.  

            That was what birthdays were for, weren't they?  A changing of who one was, a shedding of skins so that one may grow.  It was his birthday, so Remus silenced his younger selves—the aghast the thirteen year-old; the fourteen year-old who had realized that what those feelings meant and was still a bit embarrassed by them; and his fifteen year-old self, who knew exactly what he was doing here. He was sixteen tonight, and this was new. 

            "Remus?"

            "Yes, Sirius?"

            "I'd like to kiss you now, if that's alright."  The moment was here.

             "Okay."  Damnit, he was sixteen and still tongue-tied.  Unfair!  No matter how eloquent he had always wanted to be when this happened, the erudition had vanished.  His poise and precision, practised ad nausea in front of mirrors in the boys' lavatory had dissolved into these jitters.  While his legs felt like putty, his tongue was like stone.  'Okay' hadn't been what he had meant at all.  This had gone so wrong!

            Sirius nuzzled his cheek, cutting off the masochistic barrage.  In a moment, his lips had followed, skating across his face to touch Remus' mouth.  Things couldn't have been so wrong, perhaps, now that Sirius was nudging his lips apart, his tongue entering Remus' mouth.  Remus reached his right hand forward, hooking it behind Sirius' head, fingers laced in the long locks.  He had only felt his hair a few times— trailing touches too spectral to be detected.  Now, to be able to do so with such abandon was exhilarating.

            Remus supposed he could be worrying about the waxing moon that gave spotlights to the common room.  He could feel its pull, a tiny child's hand tugging at the hem of his robes.  A similarly small voice whispered that blood would be even more delicious than simple kisses, that he should open one of the scars on the inside of Sirius' mouth and have the coppery tang spill into his mouth.  The wolf seemed to be never far from his thoughts.  Indeed, he almost found himself sucking a bit too frantically at Sirius' lower lip— though Sirius did not seem to mind.

            But Remus stopped there, and slapped away that thought.  There were other, better things to pay attention to now.  Like the play of their tongues, quiet and careful.  He focused on Sirius' breathing, wondering if his own was so pitter-patter, stop-start:  even, then racing; even, then racing.  The moon slipped in and out of the clouds, and it slipped in and out of Remus' conscious.

            The kiss ended; their lips parted.  Their robes, however, remained in contact, and there was still the slightest pressure of touching bodies at hips, legs.

             "I  had hoped you'd like my present." Sirius' gentle smile returned as soon as the initial awe of the moment they had shared faded.

            "Yes, indeed…"  Remus stopped, realizing that he was referring to the helmet.  "I mean, yeah, it's awesome."

            "Awesome?"

            He batted his arm.  "Shut up, you know what I meant."

            "Yeah, I know."  Sirius kissed him again, this time a quick press against Remus' lips before he retreated.  

            "I also bought you a card," he said, "but then I accidentally chewed it up as Padfoot a couple of days ago.  But you can imagine how brilliant it was."

            "Of course.  An epic poem, right?"

            "No," said Sirius with a smile.  "Nothing that prolific.  Just a sonnet."

            Remus blushed, knowing the import of the gesture.  Of all his friends, Peter and Sirius were tied for the position of least poetic.  It was a good thing that Hogwarts didn't have any literary courses, or else the two would have been thrown out onto their uncultured backsides years ago.  And sonnets were tricky; Remus had once almost been reduced to tears by the sheer effort of creation by the beginning of the third quatrain.  For Sirius to have written for him— he blushed, sure that he was overestimating the significance.

            "So," Sirius said.  "What are you thinking about?"

            "I don't rightly know."  Remus reached down, picked up a pink card that had caught his eye, clutched it against his palm as if the dig of its sharp corners was all that was anchoring him to sanity.  "Sirius, what does this mean?"

            "Well, Moony, you see, that there is a birthday card.  Remember, we were just talking about them?  People send them to one another on birthdays.  Now, if you open it up, you'll see some squiggly marking that I call, just for kicks, words, and—"  

            A magenta projectile whizzed through the air, slicing past Sirius' ear.  "Don't be a prat.  I meant, what does tonight mean for you and me?"  

            Sirius' eyes lost their sparkling satire.  "What do you want it to mean? Because," he gestured to the upturned mugs that littered the carpeted common room floor, "I'm willing to tell you that I had at least half a dozen Butterbeers tonight, and I won't remember anything tomorrow."

            Remus bit back a gasp.  His panic came rushing back in a triumphant wave that left him cold.  "Is that— true?"

            "No.  Of course it isn't.  But it can be if you want it to."

            "Why would I want that?"  Remus guarded his emotions, didn't want to show himself again.  Sirius had taught him to be a better poker player than that.

            Sirius shrugged, eyes trailing off to rest somewhere in the shadows.  "Boys don't kiss boys.  I wondered if you minded that I broke that rule.  And if you did, I'd just as soon forget tonight ever happened."

            "Oh."  Boys don't kiss boys.  It was as simple as that.  Remus had known that; everyone did.  Some things fit, like dancing rhymes in a poem, and some things didn't.  How silly of him to forget that, to forget one of the first rules of composition.  He had been distracted, put off by velvet-soft eyes and whispered breaths.

            "But I said, 'yes.'" The words came tumbling out.

            Sirius turned.  "What?"

            "When you asked if you could kiss me, I said yes."  The expression on Sirius' face was clouded; Remus didn't quite know what to make of it.  There were traces of so many different emotions shifting and racing across those fine features.  Remus thought, among them, that he saw hope.  With that in mind, he plunged ahead.  "Maybe the rule should be, 'Boys don't kiss boys, unless they agree to it.'  Maybe that way, we're okay."

            "That's a pretty weak loophole," said Sirius, but already he was taking steps to close the distance between them once again.

            "Well, I think it's a pretty weak rule to begin with.  So maybe that's enough." Remus risked a smile.

            "You make a good point," and the good humour was reciprocated in a grin that made his knees go all trembly in a very nice way.  Sirius stood before him once more, grinning and reaching out a hand that ghosted across Remus' chest.  "And besides— when have we ever listened to weak, stupid rules anyway?"

            Remus wanted to reply with something droll, but the kiss that followed Sirius' remark would suffice for now.  There would be time for witticisms later.  After all, this was his night.  

*****

End

*****

((Wasn't that sweet?  Lather, rinse, review, everyone.  –E.H.))


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